A Brood of Vipers

long, dark face. He had the stooped shoulders of a born scholar and a heart and soul as big as any saint's. We saw the days, Benjamin and I! We travelled all over Europe carrying out tasks for his Satanic Eminence Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and that devil incarnate Henry VIII. Ah excuse me, my clerk interrupts again, he is still blubbering about his marriage. He wants me to pay. The tight little turd! He's so miserly there are cobwebs in his purse. He's the sort of man who would steal a dead fly from a blind spider! Kick him in the heart and you'll break your toes! Yes, yes, my little clerk. He's always around me whenever he needs me. The sort of fellow who would give you the shirt off your back or throw a drowning man both ends of the rope! 'Store up treasure in heaven!' I roar at him.
    Mind you, he spends so little he wouldn't even offer me the down payment on a harp. He'll also have to do something about his face before he climbs into the wedding bed – and lose some weight, especially round that moon face. After all, why should he have three chins when everyone else has only got one? Ah, I see his shoulders shaking. I never know whether he's laughing or crying. To be sure, he's not a bad little mannikin, except when he's stealing my claret or trying to inveigle Margot into the hayloft. 'You drink too much claret!' he cries.
    The little hypocrite! How dare he lecture me! When it's dark you don't need any candles, his nose is so red it lights up the room! Let me tell you a little joke I played upon him. Quite recently I travelled to London. The old queen wished to take counsel with me in her secret chambers at the Tower. She was worried about our son, our darling boy, who was last seen in the south of Spain trying to have his memoirs published. Anyway, I went, not to lie with her in a carnal sense, but to lie about the past and make her laugh so much her red wig would fall askew and the white paint on her face crack. Now, I didn't take my chaplain. I was tired of his lectures about drink and wine. Anyway, in London, I had my little jest with him. I went to a scrivener outside St Paul's. I pretended to be one of these Puritans, you know the sort -miserable as sin, with a devil-sent mission to make everyone equally unhappy. I decided to call myself the Reverend Josiah Blackwood and had the scrivener write the following letter to my darling clerk:

    Dear Sir, I have a mission from the Lord to tour this kingdom, warning all God's people against the evil dangers of drink. In my travels and peregrinations, I was accompanied by a young man named Philip, like you of good family, whose life has been ruined by deep howls of claret, pots of malmsey and jugs of London ale. During my sermons Philip would sit on a stool beside me, red-faced, bleary-eyed, farting, burping and making obscene gestures at the congregation. I would point to Philip as a living example of the devil drink. You'll be sorry to hear that, quite recently, Philip passed away. Now a good friend has given me your name as a possible replacement. I wonder if you would fill his place? You may contact me at the sign of the Green Kirtle opposite St Paul's Cathedral.
    Yours, in the odour of sanctity, the Reverend Josiah Blackwood.

    Well, I laughed myself sick. On my return from London I discovered my little turd of a chaplain was terrified lest Josiah Blackwood might come to visit. Oh, the laughs! Oh, the merriment! Weeks passed before he realized he had been gulled. I raise my hand and look at his little, plump face and solemnly swear that he has my permission to marry. I will adorn the church. I will lay on a banquet. I promise not to reveal anything about his past to his bride, on one condition -he must wear a mask throughout the ceremony. 'Oh Tempora! Oh Mores!'
    The little man rattles his quill on the table. I grow sober as memory taps on my soul. The door swings open, the ghosts beckon me back along the gallery of time, back to London when Henry and Wolsey had the kingdom in the grip of their avaricious fingers. Oh yes, back to subtle ploys and clever plans! To treason, murder and death by a thousand stings! Benjamin waits for me there. I hear the knocking, it grows incessant. I open the door and Murder, evil-faced and bloody-handed, stands waiting to greet me.

Chapter 1
    In the spring of 1523, the fourteenth year of King Henry VIII's reign, my master and I were resting from our labours at our manor outside Ipswich. Benjamin was involved in his good works